Chapter Tactics #87: Tyranids Go Undefeated at the Socal Open and Stat Analysis from the Weekend.

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Chapter Tactics is a 40k podcast which focuses on promoting better tactical play and situational awareness across all variations of the game. Today Peteypab is back with your regularly scheduled Chapter Tactics. Tournament coverage and analysis of stats from the Socal Open and talking about the two undefeated lists and the top 12.

About Petey Pab

Aspiring 40k analyst, tournament reporter and Ultramarines enthusiast, Petey Pab only seeks to gather more knowledge about the game of 40k and share it with as many people as he can in order to unite both hobbyists and gamers. We are, after all, two sides of the same coin.

17 Responses to “Chapter Tactics #87: Tyranids Go Undefeated at the Socal Open and Stat Analysis from the Weekend.”

I noticed a few of the top SoCal Chaos players were using mixed Death Guard and Nurgle Daemon, in the same detachment. #6 Richard Cozart for example. My understanding is that the Chaos Daemon’s Faction Keyword is semantically different from the Death Guard’s Faction Keyword. This would prevent mixing detachments as they do not share a common Faction Keyword for the latest Battle-Brothers rules. Is my understanding correct?

I get that in the end, they both have a Faction Keyword . Once the game starts Faction Keywords become keywords and these units can interact with one another.

Let me give a different example. Chaos Marines has and Chaos Daemons has . I made a detachment that includes Slaanesh Daemons and Emperor’s Children .

Is there a difference, semantically, between & ? GW made the design choice not to give these codices the same Chaos God Faction Keyword.

It seems like to me this falls into the same category described in the Designer’s Commentary where I can’t have the Space Marine Chapter and the Imperial Guard Regiment as Battle-Brothers. GW makes a semantic distinction between the Faction Keyword and .

The commenting system here tries to parse things in angle brackets as html tags, so you need to use something else to mark out keywords if you want anyone to know what you’re talking about.

I’m guessing you’re referring to the difference in the placeholder keywords for CSM and Daemons, {Mark of Chaos} vs. {Allegiance}. That doesn’t matter, because in both cases, it is replaced simply by the name of one of the Gods. The keyword for CSM isn’t {Mark of Khorne}, it’s just {Khorne}, exactly the same as the keyword for Daemons of Khorne.

Note, however, that since the Nurgle Detachment referred to in you OP is neither a Death Guard Detachment nor a Chaos Daemons Detachment, Units in it would not gain either the Plague Host or Daemonic Legions abilities (the “ObSec” abilities for those Factions), and unless there is also at least one Death Guard Detachment, the Army can’t use Death Guard Stratagems, ditto for Chaos Daemons Stratagems.

My confusion stems from there aren’t really any rules for Faction Keywords. The Designer’s Commentary has a few Q&A about it. Like in the Designer’s Commentary that the Faction Keyword { Regiment } isn’t the same as the Faction Keyword { Chapter }. Even if the Faction Keyword variable values are the same. It also pokes around the idea that there is a concept of official Faction Keywords that are reserved and cannot be used for your own creations. I cannot, for example, make the Tau Sept: { The Prophet’s of Flesh }.

The Designer’s Commentary Q&A doesn’t explain either what makes variable Faction Keyword’s different even if they have the same values. As people have pointed out Faction Keyword { Mark of Chaos: Nurgle } becomes Faction Keyword { Nurgle} and { Allegiance: Nurgle } becomes { Nurgle }. But my Chapter { Emperor’s Pimp Patrol } is not the same Faction Keyword as my Regiment { Emperor’s Pimp Patrol } even though they both, in the end, share the same Faction Keyword { Emperor’s Pimp Patrol }. For competitive events like ITCl where we are going off of RAW, if I ask my opponent to show me the rules that show that { Mark of Chaos: Nurgle } is semantically the same as { Allegiance: Nurgle }. I don’t think they can.

This brings me back to my original question. I understand that all these units have a Faction Keyword { Nurgle }. The Designer’s Commentary has established a rules precedent with { Regiment } != { Chapter } what allows { Mark of Chaos } = { Allegiance }? Or in the case of Thousand Sons & Nurgle, who do not have the Faction Keyword { Mark of Chaos } or { Legion }, what makes { Tzeetch / Nurgle } = { Mark of Chaos / Allegiance }?

My understanding of it is that the player created names of regiments/chapters/etc. aren’t considered to be equivalent to a user created keyword of a different type or non-player created keyword. That is what the Designer’s Commentary says and that is what it affects.

Replacing <Mark of Chaos> and/or <Allegiance> with another non-player created keyword isn’t affected by the Designer’s Commentary, so they can be used to created matching keywords.

I tried to use carrots that will display in HTML, let’s see if they worked…

Reading through the Designer’s Commentary again, they’re very specifically discussing Regiment/Chapter/whatever keywords that are created by the player of a given Army, not those assigned by the writers of the Codices.

There are also a few places where they very specifically call out certain Faction keywords (specifically Daemons and Tyranids) as interacting differently with Stratagems, but no mention of them interacting differently for Detachment-building purposes. They also reassigned the Daemon keyword on all the CSM Units it appears on from being a Faction Keyword to just being a regular Keyword so as to prevent, say, including Obliterators in a Chaos Daemons Detachment without giving up the Chaos Daemons Detachment benefits. But they did not reassign the various god’s keywords at that time.

So, even tho they haven’t directly addressed this specific case, they have addressed essentially the same situation with regard to other Faction Keywords on at least three occasions without changing the fundamentals of how they work. I can only conclude that the intention is for the Chaos god keywords to be valid common keywords for Detachment-building purposes.

I absolutely agree with you that it is a problem that the rules for Faction Keywords are so poorly and scantily written. But the intention of the Designer’s commentary seemed to me to be more about creating a distinction between player-created and designer-created keywords than about creating a distinction between Regiment and Chapter keywords.

As a final note, purely my personal opinion, it seems to me that if you follow canon fluff in these regards, you won’t go too far wrong. Does it really make any sense that there would be an Imperial Guard regiment called the Blood Angels who are capable of using the Stratagems and Relics and such of the Blood Angels Space Marine Chapter? Not to me. Does it make sense that the warriors of the Death Guard would work as closely with the Daemons of Nurgle as they might with another Legion of Heretic Astartes? Yeah, I can totally buy that.

They do however share the nurgle faction keyword so while they give up their daemon and deathguard special rules they can be in the same detachment.
Some units gain little to no benefit from those rules so there isn’t much reason not to.

Is it possible to get in touch with the three Deathwatch players who placed in the Top 50? Anthony D’amore, Matt Evans and Robert Woods.

Also, Peter, I noticed that Woods’ list was short by like 12 points. Is that something you pick on during your list entries and talk to the players about? 1-3 points is generally ok I feel, but more than that it seems players generally handicap themselves.

Been listening to the podcast for donkeys now, absolutely love it. 40kstats is the best thing to happen to 40k since the Blood Angels went all Rapunzel in their Tower of the Lost, waiting for Prince Guilliman to save them from the Nid!